fiat lux
by that's bogus sir
Summary: "You see, it seems that I've been cursed by the Chronoward." or, Rin is a magician by blood and a collector by choice; Len is just a boy with a curse Rin has promised to break, even if it means facing the Chronoward alone. — lenrin, gumirin.
1. prelude

owo _hello_. i'm currently almost finished with a darker shade of magic by v.e. schwab but i literally didn't have the attention span to read to the end today because writing this fic was so hugely on my mind. because _magic_. note that a.) this is equally lenrin as it is gumirin, except one is a lot more mutual than the other, _u kno which_ , and b.) past tense is the most aggravating thing but i [clenches fist] _had to do it to 'em_. that's all! enjoy!

rated T for violence & blood in future chapters, and probably swearing on gumi's part, _uhhh_

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 **fiat lux  
** ❝ let light be made ❞

Rin carried with her a very strange satchel.

It had in total twelve pockets, one of no more importance than any other, meant for insistent packing and quick getaways. Both its fabric and color changed as frequently as did the phases of the moon, which goaded Rin's nerves more than it alleviated them; in the midst of hoisting the strap over her shoulder, burgundy leather would melt to patterned wool, leaving her to curse at the impracticality of having a thousand bags guising as one single (incredibly annoying) bag.

But Rin was fond of it. She'd thieved and cheated her way through an already rigged game of cards — albeit a far more _magical_ version of the game — against a witless man for that satchel, plus whatever the fiends of past dilemmas had stowed in it over time. The man, Gakupo, had looked so righteous when he set his winning hand down, a full row of 3's, just to find one of them a fraud by Rin's magic and her hand deemed the winner by default; her cards had beat out his. Her magic had disheveled his. He'd almost wept at his loss.

Poor fool. Not that Rin had quite sympathized for him, not really, but a loss was a loss, and it picked at imperfection, insecurity, all the same. How many rounds of cards had Rin lost in her life just to win _one_? How much frustration had she endured, blood had she shed? She'd been robbed of clothes, weapons, her favorite spellbook, her mother's pendant. What was the point of a risk when it was tampered by faithlessness and bad intention?

If a mortal game was unfair, a game of magic, then, was devastating.

Rin, at the time, had in a rare act of selfless generosity offered Gakupo a ruby talisman she'd discovered inside the bag that he'd unsurprisingly rejected, probably for the sake of preserving his pride (what was left of it, anyway, having been mercilessly bested by a girl). Oh well. At least the bag was Rin's.

She kept more things inside it than she'd kept in her own home. _Old_ home, rather, for to her great disappointment it had been burned to the ground alongside everything within it. Years' worth of trinkets and idle possessions turned to little else but dust. Unfortunate, but not unexpected; being hunted was the consequence of hunting. To all magicians, the volte-face of success arrived only in a matter of time. Rin considered herself lucky to have avoided it for as long as she had.

That fire had been impressive for a novice. Or maybe it was just the spellwork that had sparked Rin's interest — prim, proper and pretty. Too bad the boy was dead now (or so the stories all proclaimed), overachieving potential diminished by a bounty. A shame. Rin would like to have met him once.

She thought of him as she dug through her satchel, at present a splotchy gold made of cotton, searching for something that might've gotten lost in her most recent nervous transfer of applications. When pockets stretched endlessly on, defying physics and eternities by all means, organization grew impossible, and so did maintenance. Rin had learned that a long time ago. Then she'd given up.

"What're you looking for?" a voice asked, and Rin looked up.

No one was there, which meant—

She frowned, sighing, and looked down.

There stood a sleek black cat at the edge of the table, the one crammed into Rin's apartment's kitchenette. The cat was watching Rin with blatantly curious green eyes, more like a dragon than a dragon itself.

"Do you always have to do that?" Rin said. She returned her attention to rummaging through the satchel, slicing the tip of her finger on a sharp fringe and gritting her teeth to blot out her annoyance.

"Yes," said the cat, who went exclusively by Gumi, and who seemed to get off on Rin's suffering. "I do."

Rin cast her a half-hearted glare. "I don't even know why I let you stay here."

"I pay rent," Gumi meowed.

"You're a _cat_."

"Not always." Hopping onto the table, Gumi prodded at the satchel with a paw and cocked her head, ears twitching their appeal before flattening. "You didn't answer my question," she said.

"What question?" Rin asked. She shifted past an orb that reminded her of a star caught too low and too close to the earth and shoved it aside. Lovely, but not what she wanted. Where had she _put_ it?

Gumi nudged the bag again until Rin agitatedly swatted her paw away. Taking a step back and licking the paw instead, cleansing it of Rin's filth, maybe, she said, "What're you looking for?"

"A parasol," Rin explained. She swept across a dapper kind of suit she didn't remember ever obtaining and frowned deep enough the corners of her mouth began to ache. "The, um—" Rin gave a flippant wave "—it's blue, had that sewn-in spellwork, the golden brand? It looked Utsurian."

If a cat could smile, Gumi imitated the expression perfectly, crooked and wicked, nearly threatening. Her tail flicked. "I haven't seen it," she meowed. "You've bludgeoned your touch, Rin."

"No," Rin huffed, bemused, and she snapped the satchel closed with a loud _pop_ , "but at this rate, I _am_ going to be late. I'll find the parasol later."

"You mean _we_ ," said Gumi.

"I don't," said Rin, desperate.

"Bite me." Gumi leapt off the table, and mid-way to the floor, her aura shimmered, fragmented — in a blistering swell of magic, a girl emerged from the mist and splayed herself facedown on the tile floor, naked. Rin worked her jaw as if to make a comment, but Gumi raised a hand to quiet her, saying, "Don't worry. It's not gonna last."

"One can only hope," Rin said, stepping casually over her fallen guest to don her jacket off the coat rack. "Please do us all a favor and put some clothes on, or I'm leaving you here to die."

Gumi propped herself up on her elbows, peered at Rin, and flashed a smirk that proved prettier on her when she was less animalistic. Still riled, sure, green hair gnarled in striking resemblance to a canopy of treetops, with faded scars and fresh cuts smattered over dark skin, stubborn sunburn, patches of freckles dusting her shoulders, the muscles of her back flexed taut. Whether she preferred Gumi as beast or woman, Rin wasn't certain; regardless of her form, Gumi would probably forever be a squirrely kind of weirdo.

To that, Gumi had infinite protests.

"I thought you were past the staring," Gumi said, breaking Rin's focus.

Rin narrowed her eyes and said, "I am. Now get _dressed_."

Gumi stuck her tongue out, but obliged without further banter, ascending the stairs with a deliberate, irking slowness that had Rin in blind impatience whipping her shoe off her foot and at Gumi's exposed back. Gumi sort of laughed at her, then promptly disappeared past the landing.

 _Sanct_ , Rin thought, and she rummaged through her satchel one last time.

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Len lived in a house perhaps stranger than Rin's satchel.

Technically, according to everything he had confessed to her (as a client buying her trust ought to do), the house had no more than one floor and two rooms; a bedroom, _his_ bedroom, and a bathroom. The rest of the space was for the tiny half-parlor, half-kitchen in which Rin currently sat on a plush leather chair.

Magically, Len said, the house had over three floors and thirty rooms, something of a maze, or a cube configuration puzzle; much like Rin's satchel, its affinity for never ending altercations to decor and scenery left Len more despaired and frazzled, even, than it did encouraged. He tended to circumvent the magic's throes, settling happily, if not contentedly, for his confined way of living in a dingy house on a dingy street in a dingy part of town.

In a way, Rin admired him for that. He was being challenged for his free will, his magic, his personality and surely his home — his life, were he victim of such luck — by a source and a force he knew next to nothing about, but here he was. Here was Len, calm, more himself than any client Rin had ever at the very least attempted to cure, before.

Len and his lankiness, his skeletal scrawniness like food was his foreign luxury, spine a hollow jut and fingers spent to thread; Len and his hair, wound to an unkempt ponytail, his full lips and aquiline nose. Len and his _strangeness_ , for how little he'd said, yet how much he'd already become.

He was an oddball, and Rin rather liked him.

"Coffee?" he asked from the kitchen.

"Actually," Rin said, "I quite prefer tea."

But either Len had misunderstood her or not heard her (or downright _ignored_ her), for he poured two mugs of coffee and smacked one down in front of her, beaming.

"Sorry I made your friend wait outside," he amended, nervously touching the back of his neck. "A lot of people freak me out."

Rin lifted a shoulder and the mug, clasping the warmth between her clammy palms, product of pre-speculative anxiety. She made as if to sip the coffee — black, no sugar, no cream — but decided against it, set it down, and said, "She's less of a friend as she is an accomplice, an old client that came to stay with me after I broke her curse." Smiling gently, she gestured to dismiss the issue. "It's no problem. She'd've run rampant in here, anyway. Can't guarantee she wouldn't've _broken_ something."

Len sat in the seat across from her and puffed a loose-lipped laugh. "There's not much of value for her to break," he said.

Rin drummed a finger on the mug, thinking. "Still," she managed. "I intend to make good first impressions."

"You're doing a fine job," Len told her, then leaned eagerly forward and pressed, "So... What was her deal?"

"Hm?"

"Your — _accomplice_. Her curse?"

"Oh." Rin's brow pinched. "Well," she said, "Gumi is a familiar. The witch that summoned her didn't like her enough, apparently. Too curious, which is…" Rin didn't say _true_. She shook her head and watched Len sip his coffee. "Gumi was cursed to murderous humanity. She was arrested for criminal affairs, but a guard noticed the spellwork and the Council of the Citadel hired me to break her curse and determine if, considering her state, the charges were fair."

"They must not have been," said Len.

"No," Rin said. "The moment the brands were unsealed, Gumi became her familiar self again. A cat. The Council sent out a magician who traced the spellwork and captured the witch to atone for what she'd done, and further separate Gumi from her curse."

Len raised a finger and smiled brighter. "But Gumi's not a cat," he indicated.

"Not always," Rin said, repeating Gumi's earlier sentiment. "The magic the witch used to curse her remained partially intact, so she's... _this_ , now. She's both. And I think she'll follow me to the grave."

"Wouldn't you be the luckiest."

Rolling her eyes and crossing an ankle over the other, Rin said, "I would not. But this isn't about Gumi. This is about you." She reached for the mug and sipped the coffee, inwardly cringing, but as awful as it tasted, it gave her the opportunity to stall and gather what she wanted to say. It eventually came out as, "You said you have brands?"

"Yes." Len gave an overly enthusiastic nod. He noticed her attention toward this, blushed, and abashedly ducked his head to tuck a chunk of shaggy blonde hair behind his ear. "I'd agreed to deliver something for this... woman, I guess, but I'd derailed from the task once I realized it had been used to set me up."

"You were set up?" Rin echoed, her concern piqued.

"To deliver a dangerous relic to an even more so dangerous man, yes," Len said, "and in the process get myself killed, so they'd have no one on their trail. I abandoned the duty, but I still must've corrupted a magical bond because without so much as an incantation, the brands appeared on my wrists. And somewhere along the way—" his expression dimmed significantly "—I misplaced the relic."

Rin related to that. With her satchel hung from her shoulder, she hadn't been able to completely quell her thoughts as they drifted toward the parasol, and her burned possessions, and the witch that had cursed Gumi — now this. She squared her shoulders and asked, "May I see the brands?"

"Of course. You see," Len said, baring his wrists and his ambition at Rin's request, "it seems that I've been cursed by the Chronoward."

The breath knocked itself from Rin's lungs. Unprecedented fear beyond anything else snapped rigid jaws around her heart as she jerked forward and firmly seized Len by his wrists. She gaped at the brands, symmetrical from one wrist to the other, deep etches in his skin like a wood carving brandished instead through porcelain or glass; a dotted triangle branched an arrow to a circle, cut lines past lines past lines to the cusp of his palms, fingers twitching with the thrum of magical energy.

She'd seen this brand before. On the parasol.

The parasol she'd lost.

"Rin?"

But it was the spellwork that had her stomach aching, her teeth grinding, her blue eyes wide in a flurry of flustered bewilderment. The spellwork that had Rin's magic pulsing, staccato as her building heartbeat.

It was the same spellwork responsible for burning her house to the ground.

" _Rin_?"

"Yes," Rin said immediately. She tried to withdraw her hands, but Len scrambled to hold them, tightly, tighter, _tighter_ , steadfast and unable to release a solid grasp at understanding. Breathing shakily, Rin fixed her gaze on his, and she bore witness to a sky of winter blue within. "I know. I'm going to help you."

"You're—"

" _Yes_ ," Rin stressed, her thumb pushing down upon the brand. "But first—" She stopped, and swallowed thickly, hearing the distinct click of her tongue. She felt the emblem of gold hissing out of Len's wrist to greet her magic, welcoming, sultry, but thieving, too, feeding off of her. This was strong magic, _angry_ magic — not that of a witch, nor of a divine, but of a magician. Someone akin to Rin. _Chronoward_.

"First, tell me what you know about the Chronoward," Rin said, "and everything about the relic."

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 **end prelude.**

* * *

 _there we go_ , i think i'm going to stretch this out over ten chapters in the next couple of weeks, so, _narrows eyes_. wish me luck 'cause i am so, so easily distracted and i waste so, so much time blankly staring into space when i want to write.

anyway! rin will develop more personality, i promise, and if god obeys i can finesse .3 seconds of gumiku into this, as that is who i am. until then: _this_ , my guys. a review or fav or both would be appreciated!


	2. semper idem

in this chapter: rin stares out the window and reflects on a friendless life, gumi reveals just how un-straight she actually is, gakupo's a prude, and all is whack on len's side of the story (he's probably kaworu nagisa). uhh. it's a beast. i aimed for 3000 words, but got more than double that, so. heed that dialogue is stupid and i hate it. just like, prepare to roll your eyes out at how Bad it's gonna get.

edited 2/26/19.

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 **semper idem.  
** " _always the same_ "

In a spur of the moment decision, Rin took Len out for dinner.

It seemed fair, as they'd spent the better part of two hours discussing the Chronoward, and by then Rin could've sworn she heard Len's stomach beginning to growl — not to mention Gumi had been left to her own devices longer than Rin thought was innocuous; considering Gumi's desire to cause unnecessary conflict, there was a chance she'd already burned the entire neighborhood down and her own carcass with it. Rin liked to think she'd have noticed that, though.

Fortunately, Len let Gumi tag along this time. He'd said he felt bad for all his anxieties that he'd dismissed her the way he had; Rin made to reassure him that Gumi wouldn't be bothered, except that she _would_ , of course she would, so her argument died on her tongue, and she didn't push it. At least Len was kind enough to ignore Gumi's undoubtedly blatant (though unintended) hostility. Rin couldn't ask for much more than that.

The moment she opened the front door, Len on her heels, Gumi lunged to her feet at the bottom of the doorstep, scowling. To Rin's humor, even with three stairs between them, from the asphalt Gumi stood as tall as both Len and Rin did from the top of the landing. Rin had expected to have to look _down_ , not _up_ , which was maybe the strangest of it in her amusement. She blinked, somehow surprised, and adjusted her satchel (hued now a tender lilac) at her hip. "You haven't changed," she said quaintly.

"Don't sound so disappointed."

"I'm not, really." Rin hopped off the landing to stand beside Gumi and beckoned to Len, who sheepishly extracted himself out the doorway, closing the door behind him. Rin smiled up at Gumi and ruffled her hair. "It's easier to annoy you when you can't get away so fast."

"Oh yeah?" Gumi stuck out her tongue and ducked under Rin's hand, dodging a jab to the side by encircling her arms around Rin's middle and hoisting her first into the air, then over her shoulder. She snatched both of Rin's ankles in a hand and absolved her efforts at kicking loose, the both of them exploding into laughter. "But now who's bigger, huh?" Gumi teased. " _Huh_?"

"Okay," Rin huffed, and her cheeks from the heaviness of a foreign smile ached. She tapped a fist on the small of Gumi's back with a jolt of magic and said again, " _Okay_! I get it, I get it."

Gumi promptly set Rin on solid ground in one fell swoop, for a beat looking strangely lucid, strangely surreal, as if she'd just dragged herself headfirst from a dream. "Good," she was saying, then something else, but Rin was caught dead by the look in Gumi's eyes, calculated and warm and... fond, maybe, though there was a question if Gumi had ever found fondness in anything (lest knocking Rin's artifacts off their shelves counted).

But before Rin could analyze the look, pick it apart and gauge something from it — a flicker, a light, a glow of ethereal possession — it was gone, embers dissolving from a dying flame to dust. Only a thin film of humor left, the rest just smooth indifference.

She wondered what that meant. If she cared, at the hands of a bigger matter, like the Chronoward.

Probably she didn't. _Probably_. And probably it was better off that way.

Hands jammed into the pockets of her sagging grey pants, bulky where she'd stuffed the hem into her boots, Gumi jerked her chin at Len and said with a downward quirk of her mouth, " _What_?"

Len stood awkwardly near the bottom step, his expression doing something bright red and complicated. "Uh?" he replied, tugging his coat — oversized and bunching at the knees — tighter around himself, his eyebrows all but knotted together.

Gumi puffed out a breath and drew herself taller, whirling on her heel to march on with apparent disinterest down the cobblestone path toward the street roads. Rin blinked after her, a swell of confusion hot and bleating like a sheep's croon inside her chest.

"Is she—" Len started, but he resorted to sudden silence when Rin flashed her palm in his face.

She watched Gumi turn the corner of the farthest decrepit building, bricks a stark complement to the earthy tones of her hair, her eyes, her skin, all like mud and greenery, else shrubs peeking through dusk to spills of evening moonlight. She watched the indiscrete jerk of her legs, felt the stutter of her aura, the push of her magic; body, mind and soul at conflict with one another, heart fighting to be in the right place. She watched the stumble of frustrated feet. Elbows hitting pavement. Shadows curling tendrils up the cobblestone.

Watched Gumi turn the corner. Go on anyway.

Quiet.

Rin dropped her hand. She flicked her gaze to Len, looking fragmented and out of order here, and said, "Some transitions are worse than others, for her. Those she doesn't like to show to strangers."

"It would've been the perfect opportunity for us to become acquainted," Len protested, and he offered her a weak, unsure smile.

"Well," said Rin, returning it lightly, "not for the faint of heart."

Brushing a loose cluster of hair behind her ear, Rin strolled away from him in Gumi's direction. There was a passing moment where all Len did was gawk at her back before he got the nerve to catch up and keep at her heels. He leaned over, laughing with an unexpected confidence that kicked Rin off her guard. "You think I'm faint of heart?"

"You sure seem it," she said, blue eyes the cutting edge of ice against him. "Don't like people, don't like crowds, don't like girls…" She ticked them off on her fingers as she went.

Len laughed again. It made Rin's smile wobble happily (contagiously). He said, "That's different. Seriously. Gumi's upheaval wouldn't bother me, nervous or not."

"Oh, I doubt that." Lips pouched to a faux kiss, Rin mock-examined her nails and shook her head. "The whole mess is rather gruesome. Can you imagine?" she said, then considered it perhaps sensitive and added out the blue, "Say—your anxiety." She made a vacant gesture. "Did it start before or after your run-in with the Chronoward?"

The confidence melted to abashed misgiving. Len fidgeted his fingers. "Ah, long before," he said, not looking at her anymore. "I've always been an anxious person. My mother would give me hell for it, be all, 'Len, get off your rear end and go play with those kids outside,' or — better yet — 'Len, it's your doctor, not an assassin, tell him what the problem is'. I could never talk to anyone. I still can't. Blubbering catastrophe, bloody hell."

"You've been talking to me just fine."

Len brightened for a second, white teeth twinkling between his lips. "You," he explained, "are just very easy to talk to. Some kind of allure to you, you know?"

"No," Rin said. "I don't."

Moreso throughout her life she'd been accused of being unlikeable, or revolting, even. She was a roach festering invincible beneath shackles, clothes and dirty mattresses; she was a leech at the back of every throat; she was a snake in the brush; she was armed with a sword for a tongue, a shield for a heart. She could adapt to anything, anyone, go wriggle her way through life with slit wrists, buzzed hair, and no magic. Nothing. _Unlikeable._ (Had Gumi been the first friend she'd ever made?)

Len picked a hangnail off his thumb. His mouth was wavering, like he couldn't decide whether Rin's sincerity could be comforted by a smile or not. "Maybe it's just me," he said softly.

"Maybe," said Rin, but she was thinking of Gumi. The fondness trickling from her eyes earlier.

Now this.

Len was frowning at her when she came back to it, sweat gathered at his temples, wiping it off his palms and onto his coat. "Sorry," he said. "I've upset you."

"No, it's—" Rin stopped. She glanced down at the black bundle by her boots and sighed. Green eyes cut through the darkness, staring blankly up at her. Gumi was sitting in a pile of her clothes, strewn about the cobblestone, ears flattened as though out of guilt.

"There you are," she said.

"Here I am," meowed Gumi. "Take these?"

Rin stooped to a crouch and gathered Gumi's clothes: black bra and loose-fitting white blouse, red vest, grey slacks, her worn red boots (with black laces, black soles, a gift from Rin's old mentor, Meiko; where was she now?) and her red stockings, red fingerless gloves with black bands at the knuckles, so much red like blood it was almost nauseating, disassembled there on the ground.

Standing, Rin put the clothes in a pocket of her satchel, ensuring herself she wouldn't forget where they were given the chance Gumi shifted back in public. She saw from the corner of her vision that Len's mouth had popped into a precarious _o_ , disbelieving.

"Wow," he said. "A cat! For real, you are."

"Yeah? Surprised?" Gumi said, flicking her tail. "Fuck you."

Rin jabbed Gumi's flank with the toe of her boot. "Behave," she said, and to Len, out of genuine curiosity and a sadness that their conversation had been suspended: "The anxiety. What causes it?"

Thoughtfully, Len's eyes chased the stars, a blue so dark it could've been the depths of the ocean, placate right across his face. "If I had to guess," he said, and smiled at Rin with a sort of burning compassion, "then I'd say everything."

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Downtown Mordiard came alive at night.

The city during the day was chilled to a dismal tranquility: low-rise buildings lit dimly by the sun, shy behind overcast clouds, and pillars of leafless trees on either side of the road waving branches at the few straggling pedestrians they found, lonely beauties, taciturn cyclists booking it home from work as the tassel-ends of their scarves billowed in the breeze; windows glared to silver tissue, dust on the bricks and cracks in the cobblestone made all the more evident, sidewalks bare with only the vague of imprints of old dwelling feet.

But nighttime — _nighttime_ , there was life; chipper faces, eyes dilated by herbal abuse and noses bloody from the ruckus, neon signs glowing and twinkling lights draped over the naked trees, the moon baring its fangs, a thousand stars raining chaos like kicked lanterns, drizzles of wonder, mirth, disaster; guitar players strumming melodies outside sketchy bars and young woman ducking low enough for their cleavage to show (Gumi, at Rin's feet: "Awful time to be a cat, _damn_."); bursts of colorful magic illuminating the sky, shrieks and hollers of laughter escaping the walls, men sipping drinks that started red from the first sip and ended violet by the last.

Trampling over the cobblestone, eyeing the asphalt sidewalks littered with shattered glass, stubbed-out cigarettes, unidentifiable liquids, Rin felt miraculously at home. Len had at some point begun to grip her arm, but she hadn't shaken him off, for if the whole world came crashing down on their heads right then and there, she wouldn't have noticed. She loved Mordiard, she _lived_ here (granted, in an apartment on the outskirts), she wanted to live and breathe and die here.

She came alive at night.

"This is—" Len wet his lips, practically ripping Rin's turtleneck apart at the seams. "This is a _lot_."

"We'll be out of the thick of it soon, I promise," Rin said, noting a full-throttle panic in Len's expression. She tried to stare straight ahead but an orbit had her coming back to him. "There's no other way to get where I want to go."

"We could maybe go somewhere else," Len suggested, narrowly dodging a half-clothed woman as she chucked a vial the size of his head on the stones. A spritz of green ooze splashed the cuffs of his pants. He pressed closer to Rin. " _Sanct_."

" _Sanct_ is right," said Gumi helpfully.

Ignoring her, Rin supplied, "There's a man who works there that I want to talk to. He's a bigger collector than I am. Something… like a friend of mine."

Gumi snorted. "Gakupo is not your friend. No, really — even if you hadn't cheated him blind, you still wouldn't be friends. He hates your guts."

Rin mulled this over. "Most do," she decided.

"Ditto," Gumi meowed.

Len didn't say much of anything after that until they reached the restaurant, dubbed _Wil's Bitchin' Kitchen_ according to the sign hanging above the door, painted in blue-and-black, borderline calligraphy. This made him laugh apprehensively, trying to stifle his humor into the huge tweed sleeve of his jacket. "What a name," he said.

Unlike most every other building on this avenue, Wil's was designed more with glass and wood than it was with brick, so it appeared beyond its time, caught unaware in the slide from now to later as it changed form, thin as threadbare cloth. Fortunately, the off-putting attitude shoved back any crowd, and inside with the glossy beige ceiling, russet walls and vermillion carpets only two tables were occupied. Up front, the hostess behind the desk was smiling stiffly, pearly lipstick giving her a fake, mannequin-esque likeness.

"Hi," Rin greeted. "Just wondering. Gakupo — Gakupo Kamui. Is he here?"

The hostess twirled a strand of platinum hair around a finger. "Um," she said, "yes, I believe so."

"Great. Once you seat us, would you mind fetching him for me? Just tell him it's Rin. He'll know who I am."

"Sure, sure — um. No pets allowed though, ma'am, I'm sorry."

"Oh, this old thing?" Rin hefted Gumi up by her armpits and held her out for show. "Hardly a pet. Just a menace. Right, Gumi?"

Gumi meowed, "You betcha."

The hostess blinked. "I see," she said, voice rough and scratchy. She plucked two menus free with perfectly manicured hands and indicated for Rin and Len to follow, leading them past wall-length murals of blood-mawed wolves and eight-eyed foxes to a tiny table cramped in the corner by a window overlooking the city. Rin allowed herself a secret smile as she sat.

"Well, I'm Mayu. If you need anything just let me know. I'll go see if Gakupo is available." Mayu took a bow and scurried away, the click of her heels muted on the carpet.

Gumi, curled in Rin's lap, gave a satisfied twitch of her whiskers. "Jittery. What do you think she's on?"

"Some drug I haven't had enough of," Rin said as she flipped her menu to a random page and selected some desultory option; rice and chicken, sure, whatever, it wasn't quite the food she was here for.

Len had on the other hand shrugged out of his coat and draped it on the back of his chair, getting comfortable. He hungrily scoured over the menu, humming to himself. "This place is prettier than the name entails," he said. When Rin just cocked her head at him, he blushed and waved mildly at the brass chandelier above them, splintered sallow light emblazoning his cheeks and hair to halos of gold.

"It is," Rin agreed. She set her menu aside and mindlessly stroked Gumi's neck. "Wil works himself to the bone to keep it that way."

"Wil... Have you met the man himself?"

"Yes." She scrunched her nose. "Not under the best circumstances, but I _have_ met him. A real sweetheart, has two brothers — I believe he's married now, actually. His wife might even be pregnant," she said, "though I don't remember."

Still briefing through the menu, Len chewed his index nail and said, "And Gakupo? The not-friend? Do the bad circumstances have to do with that?"

"Yes," said Rin again, "actually." She itched her cheek. "Every so often, Wil hosts game events here. Like — poker, cards, boards, all of them magic schemes. Cheating's basically a prerequisite — so is having good betting material: relics, artifacts, scrolls... That sort of thing." Rapping her knuckles on the satchel at her hip, she mused, "I got this baby in an old match against Gakupo, a chef here, good friends with Wil; a collector but not much of a magician. I spent the entire round letting him think he had me beat, but — _well_."

"Well what?"

Rin knocked around in her seat.

Gakupo was leaning against a chair at the nearest table, as elegant as Rin remembered him: violet hair tethered in a sleek ponytail to his waist, swaying without wind, bangs pinned up out of his face; spring-soft lavender eyes and feminine lashes but a hard, square jaw, aquiline nose, gaunt mouth; he was dressed in white upon white, jacket with frills at the wrist and ruffles down the front, double button rows a splash of tar on a snowy canvas; collar popped up a swan neck, legs long beneath white dress pants, hips jutting, foot cocked just so. Not a blemish on him, frowning but dully amused.

"Gakt," she said. "Hello."

"Rin." He tossed his head modestly, thread of hair striking a fatal _snap_ like a snake with prey in its jaws. "I can't begin to imagine what's brought you back," he admitted.

"Nothing too bad. Pull up a seat." Rin huffed, gazing back at Len. "This could be awhile."

But Gakupo just stood there, eyes narrowing to pinpricks of purple petals, fingers clenched taut in his biceps. "Him." He flicked a finger Len's way. "Who is he?"

"A friend!" Len said immediately. "Len, I'm Len. Len Kagamine. Nice to meet you."

Rin startled. _Kagamine_. Had she known that was his last name? Something about it resonated with her, chewed the arteries raw in her heart. She wasn't certain what, wasn't sure why. _Kagamine_.

"And the rodent?" Gakupo was saying. He gestured crudely at Gumi's dozing figure.

She shook her head. "You've met her. Gumi." At his bewildered expression, Rin lazily floated a hand and said, "She's a familiar. Will you please sit?"

This time, Gakupo got the hint and scraped a chair over, sitting with all the mannerism in the world of a rich man gloating for grief, his legs crossed and fingers steepled neatly on a knee, staring at Rin through lashes made of raven feathers. "What do I have to do with this funny business?" he asked. His voice was far from pleasant. He'd never been one for being disturbed.

"An answer." Rin tipped her chin at him. "The Chronoward. Have you heard of her?"

Gakupo's posture ameliorated immediately, spine an iron rod up the chair backing. "Of course," he said, quieter. "Difficult not to have."

"My friend Len here's run into something of a predicament with her," Rin said. "A curse."

"A curse?" Gakupo's brows shot up. "Really? The Chronoward herself?"

Len lowered his nose and fussed with his hair. "Yes, well—" He cleared his throat. "I was meant to deliver a relic to a companion of hers, but it was all a ruse to bring a greater evil to power. I ended up snuffing out the plan and I stopped halfway to where I was supposed to go, I — well, I thought perhaps I'd keep the relic, but..." He sheepishly touched index and middle to his nape, glowing red. "There was pain, and these _brands_ , and... The relic was gone when I came to, in an alley, covered in blood."

Gakupo prudently rubbed his chin, then touched the pad of his thumb to his lips. "The relic," he said. "What was it?"

"Well, it... It was a gem, or — a _stone_ , even, I don't know," Len tried, refusing to make eye contact. "It had a hole in the center, a jagged edge, uh... _Runes_. Another language, I don't know what it said—"

" _Teneguine Icae_ ," Gakupo interrupted.

"Excuse me?" said Rin, and at her tone Gumi popped up to her shoulders behind the table. Len went unnervingly still.

" _Teneguine Icae_." Dropping his head, Gakupo craned his neck and exhaled, as if to blow the situation in a gust out the window. "That is, to say, corrupted blood magic."

"Blood magic?" Gumi placed a paw on the table to show her contribution. "Blood magic has been forbidden for as long as J'reska's been the capital; nearly half a century."

Gakupo nodded. "Yes, but the problem with having a power being staked 'forbidden' is it indirectly encourages the common moron to want it more, take the risks to get it, whether it be spells, slaughter, sacrifices — the occult, really, ritualistic and impractical. _Teneguine Icae_ is the occurrence of an unstable vessel obtaining _Sanguine Icae_ — blood magic, yes." He clicked his tongue. "The imbalance corrupts first their magic, later their soul. Ransacks their minds and malforms them to killers. Burns their nerves to the gutter, 'til they're sullied beyond redemption."

" _Sanct_ ," Rin murmured.

Len was reeling in his seat. "Yeah, but what does that have to do with the stone?"

"There have been rumors of a relic — your stone, it seems — that was left behind before the banishment of _Sanguine Icae_ , before it was thought as dangerous." Gakupo hooked an arm around the splat of his chair, almost wistful, and said, "A magician tore from herself her magic, bound the soul to a stone, must have followed a kind of recipe... These things cannot be done helter-skelter, no, there _must_ be a method, a blueprint... It killed her, the act, and the remnants of her magic — she, the last blood magician — ...It was encased in that stone."

"How was the stone not tracked? Destroyed?" Len asked, looking increasingly panicked.

"Beats me. The best I can assume is the Chronoward wasn't planning to have _brand boy_ here deliver the stone to anyone. I mean, have you seen his aura? I mean, it's incredible, Rin. Really," Gakupo waggled a finger, "the Chronoward must've linked the soul of the stone's magician partially to him, partially to herself, and I assume, now, she's infected him with _Sanguine Icae_ , for he's a far more suitable vessel than even _she_ could be, with the power that she has. But in due time—"

"Wait," said Rin, annoyed. "The Chronoward set Len up, but — convinced him she was setting him up in an entirely different way? Meaning he fell directly into her plan how she wanted him to, by doing the adverse of what she _told_ him? Just to—to what, force blood magic upon him? That's absurd."

"Maybe so, but what does it matter if he did what she wanted of him? The curse'll bleed through him one way or another, as the story goes. But," Gakupo laughed, throwing up his hands in surrender, "it's all just that, anyway — a _story_. Blasphemous if you ask me."

"Blasphemous?" cried Len, appalled. "If it was blasphemous I wouldn't be _cursed_! She gave me that stone for a reason. She _tricked_ me."

"Gakt, I mean... his brands. It's no joke. They matched precisely with the ones on a parasol I found just days ago — and now it's gone, at the same time I go to work with Len," Rin said, rubbing her temples. "Len, show him."

Flustered, Len obliged and rolled his sleeves up, obviously discomfited by how close Gakupo studied them. He was reduced to squirming in his seat and grew quick to hide them again, moment come that he could.

Gakupo pulled a face. "I've really never seen that kind of brand before. Not even something _like_ it," he said. "How... _odd_."

"Yes, and it was the same with the parasol." Rin tapped her fists twice on the table to reiterate: " _Precisely_. With the power of this stone, do you think it's possible the parasol is — that _I_ am — bait, all of us? Does the Chronoward want something from us? From Len?"

Gakupo _tsk_ ed. "No, love, no. You're lost in your naivete, Rin," he said. "The Chronoward doesn't give a damn about you or brand boy; all she wants is what is forbidden. She is a new villain. She is breakneck, a walking catastrophe! She bends time. It grieves for her. Why would she need blood magic? But brand boy, on the other hand—"

Sounding exasperated, Len said, "I have a name, you know—"

"— _brand boy_ ," Gakupo continued, "has an almost flawless aura and immaculate potential, but does not live up to it. The Chronoward can use a nifty kid like him to her advantage. _Make_ him live up to it. She'll give him power, forbidden and unknown to him, and then — you lose." He flicked his wrist. "It's over."

"Over?" Len started to sink against the table, fisting his hair and wrenching shut his eyes. " _Over_?"

"You'll be her minion. Prized possession. But only, _only_ , if she hunts for you and manages to _claim_ you." Gakupo cut his focus to Rin, and with his steely neutrality still in place he nodded at her. "And she won't. Rin is _Sacre Madict_ herself; she's no hero but she's no villain, either. If you want to be protected, then she will protect you."

But already protection had soared in plumes out of Len's reach; he'd latched onto one phrase, the single thing Rin hadn't wanted him to hear: " _Sacre Madict_? What's that?"

"Gakt," Rin warned.

" _Sacre Madict_ ," Gakupo said. He lifted his shoulders tastelessly. "Accursed."

"Gakt—"

"Accursed!" Len roared. In his upset he stood so suddenly his chair toppled, hitting the carpet and spooking Gumi back into Rin's lap. Puffing, Len hit his palms on the table and demanded, "You're cursed, too? And you didn't tell me?"

Rin attempted to whittle Gakupo down to sand with daggers in her eyes, but he only smiled, adamantine in his verdict, and rose brusquely to his feet. "What can I say?" he hummed. "I'm a homewrecker. Consider it revenge for the satchel. Now—" He sashayed deftly to the side, milk-white knuckles propped on his hip, arrant and ridiculous. "Word of advice, love: I recommend you speak with Kaito in the Citadel. I'm sure his squadron has already begun investigating the case of the Chronoward. He could be of use to you."

"You think?"

"Oh, I know. Kaito and I are—" Gakupo laughed, " _friends_ , of the sort. But of course you've heard of him."

"Of course," agreed Rin, who hadn't heard much. (Though Meiko, back in the day, carried admiration for his aloof prowess, however reserved she may have been about it.)

"Well. There you have it." Gakupo swept his hair aside. "I've told you all I know. _Teneguine Icae_ ; you'll remember that?"

"Yes."

"And you will be careful?"

"In handling blasphemy? Yes."

"Then, you have little other use for me. May I take my leave?"

" _Rin_! _Sacre Madict_!"

"Yes," said Rin, resigned to pinching the bridge of her nose, "you may. Thank you."

Once he'd left (doting as he'd wished them good riddance and good luck), Rin waved to the hostess and called, "Mayu, dearest; when you get a chance, some wine, please?"

.

Food and wine, at least, delayed Len's eagerness on the subject of _Sacre Madict_. He ate like he'd never seen food in his life before, clearing plates of seasoned summer squash, draining bowls of heavy broth, paring every last morsel from his cutlery, licking knives and spoons and forks.

Rin slipped glass between her lips and swallowed wine until her head hurt. Len was drinking ample amounts of spiced juice instead. and his mien had tapered back to its usual fuddled malaise. He hadn't brought up _Sacre Madict_ since the food had arrived on heaping trays and platters, and Rin hadn't said a word at all since she'd beckoned over Mayu for the wine. Gumi in Rin's lap had been abiding by the unspoken rule of silence herself.

When Len had at last devoured the dregs of his meal, he wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and said, "So. Tell me what I want to hear."

"Go home?"

"No."

Rin sipped her wine. "Look," she tried, "it's not a big deal."

" _Not a big deal_ , she says," Len scoffed, staring at a chip of porcelain in a plate and picking at the tiny white nook. "I think it's a huge deal. I didn't know the accursed could cure the accursed. That's — it just sounds impossible."

"I suppose it depends on the curse." Rin circled her thumb around the rim of the wine glass, contemplating. Was this something she wanted to talk about? Here, now? Within a day of knowing him? But that stark, warm vigor in his eyes was pleading. Trustworthy. _Fond_.

She swallowed. Her heart hammered agonizingly, boxed inside her ribcage, wresting for release. Rin faintly touched her collarbone and felt her magic pulse to meet her at the tips of her fingers. She sighed.

"I was cursed when I was twelve."

Gumi cracked open an eye. Swished her tail.

"My curse is simple enough: I cure other, softer _Sacre Madict_ to stay alive. If I fail to dispel curses, if I fail to take the magic, I will die. That's all."

"So this is no passion of yours, then," Len said. He didn't sound judgmental. Just puzzled, discerning. ( _Kagamine_ , the name still buzzing around Rin's head, _Kagamine_ —)

"Maybe." Rin swirled the contents of her glass, gaze unfocused because, was it a passion? Was breaking curses, being a savior, parading around her magic a passion? A lifestyle, yes — what other choice did she have? — but a passion? Although the routine was familiar, she couldn't say she enjoyed it. She missed recklessness. Missed pride. To Len, she said, "If it's curses the Chronoward is putting out, then it seems I'll never run out of business."

Len was frowning. (She was beginning to realize how much she hated when he did this.) "Who was it that cursed you?"

"I don't remember."

"You don't remember _anything_ about them?"

Rin shook her head. "Nothing. I don't remember it."

"Wow." Len slumped back in his chair. He perked up again just as quickly. "Well, you must have a brand, then."

"...Naturally, yes. I do," said Rin, tugging the throat of her turtleneck. She felt heat rise with a sickening fever to her skin. "It spans from the back of my neck to the bottom of my spine, kind of, um, too... _intimate_ to be brandishing in public. I mean — compared to the brands of the _Sacre Madict_ I've _cured_ , it's haunting, to me. There aren't many days where I forget it's there."

"Worse than mine," meowed Gumi, "that's for sure."

"I don't go around sharing that I'm _Sacre Madict_ ; it would social suicide. How would my clients feel were I to explain that for all the curses I've cured, I haven't cured my own? I don't even know how. I don't know where to start. No one wants to know that."

"I do," Len said. "I want to know that."

"Really?" Rin cocked her head at him, hair falling into her eyes. She brushed it meekly off her face and challenged, "How can you have any faith in me that your curse is one I can break, hm? You may be _Sacre Madict_ for the rest of your life — so may I. It should be kept a secret, my issue. It should."

"But—" Len leaned forward and reached across the table, fumbling for Rin's hands. She let him take them, wide-eyed, the pitter-patter of her heart not quite to tempo.

 _Kagamine_ , she thought. _What does that mean to me?_

"But," Len reaffirmed, meeting her gaze, "there's got to be a way out. I can help you. I can break your curse just how you're breaking mine. No more _Sacre Madict_ for either of us."

A choked laugh escaped Rin's lips; she retracted her hands from his cautiously and clasped them over Gumi's rigid back. "You don't know how to break a curse," she said. "Certainly not mine."

"I could try," Len said, so serious and so determined Rin wondered if she ought to feel proud of him.

She didn't.

She said, "No. You would die trying."

"Rin, if that's what it takes—"

" _No_ ," Rin stressed, and she no longer found his hero-complex amusing. "My life is not one in need of saving, Len. But yours is. Gumi's was. And the Chronoward's is one in need of ending. I need you to help me do that; I don't need you to help me help _me_. Understood?"

Silence; teeth chewing his mouth, cheeks a rosy pink, shoulders to his ears, all embarrassment. Just a bundle of electrified nerves.

 _Kagamine_.

"Understood?" Rin snapped, and she did not wonder why it felt like she was on the brink of crying. Why her heart felt a breath away from bursting. " _Len_."

"Yes," he said softly, "I understand."

Then Rin paid the bill without another word.

.

Outside, the bustle of Mordiard had yet to settle. The moon had pirouetted and reached its peak, waltzing ribbons over the night sky, and the clamor of voices and noise was Rin's reminder of solace: cobblestone, magic, temptations, darkness, stars and—

"Well," Len said, shuffling his feet on the stone. "I guess this is where we part ways."

Rin blinked. "Hm?"

"Time for me to go home. Time for you and Gumi to go home. Yeah?"

"Oh." Some part of Rin had hoped he'd straggle after them toward the apartment. He could adorn the couch with his sprawling limbs and knocked knees, make the whole room a little warmer, little brighter; cast magic glows on the walls with a radiant, blood-soaked aura. "Yes. That. Pack a bag tonight and I'll grab you in the late morning tomorrow. Does that work?"

"Sure."

"You'll like Kaito," Rin said, and thought perhaps she was stalling. "He's a good man."

"Not to mention the magician who tracked my witch," Gumi meowed where she was perched on Rin's shoulder, nipping at a fly by her paw.

When Len had nothing to add to that, Rin gestured limply, trying, "You'll be alright walking home?"

"Probably," he said. "I'll take the back route. Stay out the crowd's hell-path."

"Good."

"Yeah."

They stood there a moment. Then, in a rush, Len threw his arms around Rin and hugged her for a brief heartbeat to his chest, ushering Gumi to the ground and Rin to the cordial stupefaction of a courted girl. She patted his back good-naturedly, lips wobbling up a storm. When Len jerked away, holding her at arm's-length, she was cold. Deprived of something.

"Well," Len said, "thanks for coming all the way out here for me. It means a whole lot, Rin. Thank you so much. I'm glad I got to meet you."

The wobbling thawed to a smile, brilliant and beaming. "You make it seem as though this was a one night affair."

Len barked a laugh. "No! No, that's—I just meant I'm grateful. You're a wonderful woman. I don't know anyone else who would do this for a stranger."

"Mind that you're a stranger yourself," Rin teased. "And here you are, offering your life to me."

" _Well_ —" Len blushed, and erupted into another fit of giggles. "It's whatever," he insisted, flapping his hand at her, starting to turn away, Rin thinking, _No, don't go_ , as his back blotted out the alley, coat rippling a course on the wind. "Thank you again," he said, waving, walking — leaving. _Don't go_. "I'll see you tomorrow!"

"Yes. See you tomorrow," Rin murmured, but there he went, voice falling on deaf ears as the darkness plucked away his coat, then his shoes, his hair, blue buried deep within Rin's memory.

She replayed his words in her head, loop ad nauseam: _Kagamine. If it was blasphemous I wouldn't be cursed. She gave me that stone for a reason. I'm glad I got to meet you._

"Rin?" Gumi said.

Rin wiped her cheeks. "What, Gumi?"

"I trust him as far as I can throw him."

Mordiard stuttered to a halt, a perilous and imminent cataclysm looming above the city like a pendulum, swinging, swinging. Rin paced back, wheeled around, and walked on toward home. The whole city could hear her footsteps. The whole world could hear her internalized war, a battle there that she was fighting, and losing.

"Come," she said to Gumi, still and agitated at the curb. "I'm exhausted."

"You're trusting him this easily? He reeks _traitor_. A total deviant—"

"I don't want to hear it," Rin whispered. She frowned down at her familiar friend, seconds from protesting. "No, Gumi. Please."

Gumi knew when to drop it; she bounded after Rin, padding swiftly by her side, and Mordiard sent them helplessly on their sorrow way, dusk encroaching and the moon like a jewel behind bars, somber in its dowsing, as beautiful as it was foreboding.

.

Rin didn't know what she'd been expecting.

Len, yes — him with his rowdy hair and shifts in timid anxiety to blooming light-heartedness, him and his smile, his frown, the crease between his brow, him and his fondness. She'd been expecting the strangeness of his house whispering melodies alongside the strangeness of her satchel, coffee before departing, a run-through of the day's plan (they'd take the train into J'reska, walk from there to the Citadel, mosy about at shops, and _then_ go find Kaito).

She'd been expecting casualty. Niceties. Familiarities. His warmth and his shine, his deliberate sympathy, the abruptness of his periodic behavior and his hands in her shirt. Gaps between their fingers entwined, just so. A messy scrawl of him against her.

What she had not been expecting, though, was this: his house, burned down to its foundation; a chalk outline to prevent the flames from having escaped; spellwork like that which caused the collapse of her own home, months ago.

And in the ruins, a message:

 _If you want me, come find me._

— _Len._

.

.

 **end semper idem.**

* * *

wrroooow scoobs. this one's the Worst and i'm not so confident in it but i wanted to post it cause next up: things get juicy rhrtkjkyjk _forgive me_. hopefully it wasn't too much of a bore and i actually made like one ounce, even, of coherent sense. thank u for the read! until chapter 3.


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